Bernd Heinrich observes birds and other wildlife while walking along a beaver dam in Hinesburg. / EMILY McMANAMY/Free Press

Written by

Bernd Heinrich

The day before yesterday I saw a white bird dropping under a branch of a cherry tree and at the edge of a vernal pool where the wood frogs were having their annual 2-3 day chorus and spawning event. I was excited, thinking: the hawk is back and hunting frogs. Every spring a Broad-winged Hawk pair nest about a quarter mile away in the fork of a sugar maple tree, and come to intercept frogs at the pool. The next day I looked, and there was one of them. It was fluffed out with its rust-brown mottled breast, lemon yellow cere of bill and with his egg-yolk-yellow feet grasping a cherry branch while facing the sun. It was looking down attentively, watching the pool.

That’s when I had a rush — so many pieces fit together and I could put it into a “picture,” whereas before all would have been just random noise. It was not the image of the hawk that excited, as much as the story behind its presence and behavior. I knew from my previous summers that the hawks put greens into the nest after the young hatch, and they keep replenishing them until they fledge over a month later. These greens serve as a replenishable clean “tablecloth” that presumably helps reduce the decay germs and retards spoilage at high temperatures of the prey these late-summer nesting hawks stockpile in the nest to feed the young. The context of that story made the hawk interesting, and beautiful.

When I witness such a scene, my natural inclination is to share the discovery through writing. I don’t think I ever thought there was a fundamental difference between science and art, because to me the world of nature – and nature encompasses ALL that is real – is the most fabulous thing in the world! Nature is the foundation of wonder. And wonder comes from the interesting, that which surprises, is new or enigmatic. Only the real has relevance, and it often hinges on tiny clues.

While still an undergraduate, I thought that “writing” would be a wonderful thing to do, because I liked to read and to learn all about how fabulously wonderful the world is. But the problem was, I had nothing to report. I had nothing to write about. Livingston and Speke had explored Africa, Wallace and Bates had been to the Amazon, Sir Edmund Hillary had climbed Mt. Everest. The library was plumb full of books to read. But I wondered: Had anyone ever sat in a tree, every day for a full year through all the seasons and reported everything?

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'I had tasted discovery'

After a little thought, I decided I could not do it. There was just too much going on underground at the roots and inside in the wood. So I gave up on the idea and ended up doing a master’s degree trying to figure out how a microscopic protozoan — which could change back and forth between a plant-like green form to a swiftly moving animal-like form — metabolized acetic acid (basically, vinegar). Many of the facts were not of interest to most people, because they didn’t see how they “relate” to anything. And nobody can relate to anything unless they understand the context or connection. However, I had “tasted” discovery — seeing what nobody had seen before. It wasn’t much, but the scientific enterprise is so grand and beautiful, that even to contribute one stroke to the great communal picture was thrilling and thus precious. To write about it was to be the crier who brought the news as well: “Look, look —something beautiful!”

The lining of the Broad-winged Hawk nest with greens was not beautiful to me because they might be a decoration. The beauty was in their meaning — what it meant to everything else. Similarly, seeing the hawk at the vernal pool was not the same as just seeing a hawk. It gave me a thrill to see it there, because it helps to validify a potential picture, and furthermore, this morning the frogs were silent. There had been periods on the day before when they had been silent, but I had no idea of any potential reason. Does the hawk come because it connected their sounds to their presence? If so it must be a quick learner because sometimes they call only 2-3 days per year, and even then they make it difficult for any would-be predator by spontaneously going quiet and hiding under water for long periods. When I checked again, the frogs were vocal as always, and the hawk was not there. There is a story, a picture, that is suggested here, but only long and painstaking work will produce it, or destroy it to point to another instead. I’ll look again, next year.

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In my work, I find that beauty is the harmonious relationship of facts, ideas, lines and color combinations that make a picture or story out of chaos. To the physicist Paul Dirac beauty was truth, and he went so far as to quip that it is “more important that the formulas are beautiful than that the experiments fit.” Obviously, though, this has it backwards: Truth makes beauty not the other way around, as noted humorously by the British biologist Thomas Huxley, “Many a beautiful theory is felled by an ugly fact.”

Finding beauty 'where the tension is'

I’m now more than ever doing what I was originally foolishly contemplating of doing. Some might say I’m still “sitting in a tree counting leaves.” Perhaps it is true. I’m living in cabin in the middle of a forest trying to observe “everything” about birds – when everyone, including myself, knows that you “do science” by bearing down and focusing on one thing instead. But the presumption here is on the “instead.” I am “in it” to make discoveries, and you seldom make a discovery by looking where everybody else is looking. You have to look where you know something, but not too much, where you find passion, but not too much so as to cloud logic. I know “something” about birds and I have a passion for birds because I think they are amazing. And they are amazing because they are beautiful and there are many things to learn about them. It does not matter what species, because they are very different from us, and from each other. At the same time, they are very similar to us and each other. That is where the tension is.

The Broad-winged Hawk lines its nest with bark chips before it lays its eggs, and then after the young hatch — when no other birds still build their nest — they start putting greens in, and specifically ferns and cedar sprigs. Starlings and some other tree-hole nesters sometimes put aromatic greens into their nests, but only before their eggs are laid. Apparently these have some medicinal effect, and they are brought as a nuptial gift by the male to woo the female and make the nesting spot more attractive to her. We also “line the nest.” I have myself on occasion brought fresh flowers home to win favor. We have the same prerogatives of pairing, homing, childcare, food-getting, processing and preservation. We may just not be quite so specifically predictable, although that may be debatable. On the other hand, in my recent long-term observations of birds, I’ve found far more individual variation than I ever imagined. These observations are, of course, “anecdotes” and they thus do not generally get reported because they are not “science,” even though they are real. But they only become real when seen in a larger and mostly continuous rather than random context, where they may or may not create a coherent picture.

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'The edge of what we do know'

To be true, by definition, means something has to be proven. And to prove requires observation, knowledge, craft, deduction, inference, perseverance and focus. But what is the point if its not finally articulated? It would just go to waste. And it seems to me stories do not have to be overly complex to be profound. In fact, simpler is better. Reduced to the most fundamental elements is best. That’s elegance. For me, one simple fact proved that, by their behavior, ravens had insight. Insight is doing something that is new, cannot have been specifically programmed by either learning or genetic programming, and that solves a problem. The behavior of adult ravens that had been reared in captivity (to control for their experience) who pulled up food by pulling up successive loops of string to reach food, did just that.

I believe many who do not have the wherewithal to produce the facts, are still appreciative to see beauty. To write about it is to try to see through to the story first. It is to review it, and often it is to see it anew. Very often also, at least for me, the exercise of trying to articulate it brings me to the edge of what we do know, and so it informs of where to go next, to carefully find those details that matter.

In my present “work” I have become hooked on watching local wild birds, mostly those attracted directly around my cabin, so that the cabin with its numerous windows effectively serves as a blind/hide where I reside “permanent.” I’m somewhat bemused if not also amused at myself for now doing something very close to what I had contemplated some 50 years ago, but thought tedious and impossible besides. The main difference: I’m not doing it from a tree but from what I’d come to call my “Tree House” (because it has a big pine tree stem built into it). And of course, I’m taking meticulous notes on “everything” I see because there is never any way of knowing beforehand what might turn out to be important. By my immersion I’ve come to recognize a few individuals, and am following their stories that are becoming mini-biographies. When I write about them, I will also paint their portraits in watercolor, and they will be doing key events of whatever it was that stood out to me as interesting.

Bernd Heinrich, professor emeritus of biology at the University of Vermont, is the author of several books on nature, behavior and biology. He won the 2013 PEN New England Award for his book "Life Everlasting: The Animal Way of Death" (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), which examines death and rebirth in the animal world. He lived in Hinesburg for most of his career at UVM, but now spends most of his time at his camp in western Maine.